Tom Boswell

Tom Boswell

BIO:Tom Boswell is a community organizer, photographer and freelance journalist residing in Evansville, Wisconsin. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, The Potomac Review, The Dos Passos Review, Two Thirds North and other journals. He has won national contests judged by Luis Alberto Urrea, Robert Cording and Tony Hoagland.

PUBLICATIONS:Midwestern Heart (Codhill Press, 2011), winner of the 2011 Codhill Poetry Chapbook Award, is available through various vendors including SUNY Press, Powell’s Books and Amazon, as well as some local bookstores, the author, or at codhill.com/boswell_mid-heart.html.

Poetry

Black is the color of my true love

for Paul

I wish to see the streets swellwith these earnest Americans, knowingfull well that the larger the crowd,the more alone I will feel.

Today I stand in the shadows watchingthe young ones dressed in black,their ragged black flag flutteringin February’s breeze, as they march by

Beating on plastic buckets like bratty children.I am old enough to be their fatherand would not expect them to inviteme inside their clubhouse, even if I dared

Ask, but my dark and brooding heartheaves with joy to see them break ranksand spoil the neat plans of my friends,who want only to hand themselves over,

Politely, to the police and be led awayin quiet pairs without having botheredto disturb the peace. In this countrythat is not mine, these young Americans

Dressed in black are the nearest thingto beauty that I know, yet I will put ona tie when I mean to make trouble,resigned to never know how they come by

Their brand of anarchism, and they will neverknow my father Good man who, like me,often stood sulking in these shadows,watching the young and pretty ones,

Wishing only to be of use, hungeringfor a home in this alien world,wanting only to sew and fly a simple flagwith no colors that no one need salute.

First appeared in the Minnesota Review

The Catalpa in June

It’s all so fast, so fleeting, so perversethe way the Catalpa blooms, then shrugs offits profligate white bouquets each June.

Soon they fill the lawn, to be followedlater by the long pods resembling abandonedsnake skins, then finally the enormous

heart-shaped leaves. All this beauty spent,relinquished, for what? Leaving for work,I back my car onto the street, marveling

at all this waste each summer. On the sidewalkis a woman of indeterminate age, hairdraggled like scraggly weeds, an infant

clinging to her hip. At her side, a girl with long,dark, luxurious hair. She is beautiful.Her eyes catch mine, then look away.

This family—I surmise—lives in one of theseshabby duplexes—with bare wood and tatteredtarpaper—scattered among the Victorians.

The girl could be a model or a debutante,if only she came from money. But moneydoesn’t grow on trees. Only white flowers